Blackout boosts Web outsourcing firms

This week's power outage in the San Francisco area has given
Web-hosting companies new ammunition for pitching their services to potential customers that experienced difficulties during the blackout.

"At least two customers that had dormant proposals [to host sites
elsewhere]
called us after the outage," said Vaughn Harring, spokesman for GTE Internetworking, a hosting firm.

But nobody moved faster than one new customer of Exodus. When the
customer lost its power, it loaded its server into a company truck, drove
30 miles to Exodus's hosting facility, and was back on the Net before power
was restored to its own building.

Like other Web-hosting firms, GTE's sales force is using the outage in its marketing, hoping to
sway companies that lost crucial functions when the power went down for as many as seven hours in some parts of San Francisco on Tuesday, affecting
more than 375,900 customers and at least 1 million people.

"As a result of the power outage, we are considering more redundancy and
hosting at other locations, but this was part of our plan from the
beginning," said John Stormer, vice president of marketing for North Point Communications, a provider of high-speed communications services.

"You sort of get invigorated by something like this," he added. "We are
prepared for earthquakes and power outages, but we continue to bolster that
capability. Part of the strategy would be to put either redundant servers
or outsource."

North Point currently outsources some functions to Web hoster Best Internet--but not its mission-critical
network-management software, which it ran from its own San Francisco site
on auxiliary power when the lights went out. North Point will keep that
software in-house while it may turn its extranet for partners and resellers
over to Best.

Web hosting services like Best, GTE, Digex, Exodus, and Verio, which is acquiring Best, have
backup power systems, multiple connections to Internet backbones, and
sometimes duplicate servers hundreds of miles away, all in an effort to
guarantee uninterrupted service.

Hosting firms call outsourcing a company's servers "co-location," and Best
Internet sales director Dayton Keane says the San Francisco outage is only
the latest in a series of natural disasters to raise the firm's visibility among
companies now hosting their own Web sites.

"This is part of a string of events that sends a signal," said Keane, whose
company has gone from fewer than 100 co-located sites a year ago to 220
today.

San Francisco-based comparison-shopping site CompareNet, for example, kept its
Web site in operation during the blackout because it was hosted at Frontier Globalcenter in Sunnyvale,
California.

But many companies worry about turning over sensitive data or
mission-critical functions to an outside company. Mortgage broker HomeShark went down for
three-and-a-half hours Tuesday but plans to set up a mirror site on its own
rather than outsourcing.

"We like to keep the information in-house to ensure privacy and security,"
a spokeswoman said, noting that loan applications include sensitive
personal data entrusted to the company.

"It is indeed like a bank vault," he said, noting the Internet credit card
issuer Next Card hosts its site
with Exodus.

Many large companies already have duplicate locations to keep critical
services operating. The ATM networks of both Wells Fargo Bank and Bank of America were affected in
areas with no power Tuesday, but online banking and Web sites for the two
banks were not affected. Both have duplicate servers at distant locations.

And outsourcing isn't for everyone. Palo Alto law firm Cooley Godward had its email and phone
systems disrupted for a few hours because they are housed in San Francisco,
but client services manager Kate Fitzgerald said the firm is not looking at
outsourcing.

"We actually handled this situation very well. This was definitely a test
of our
emergency systems and consequently a wake-up call to see if we are really
ready," Fitzgerald said.